FasTracks gets thumbs-up in poll, but some in Boulder prefer another finger

Travelers wait for the doors to open to hop on the northbound train at Mineral and Santa Fe. John Leyba/ The Denver Post

It’s been nearly 10 years since Regional Transportation District voters approved FasTracks, which hiked local sales taxes to pay for an ambitious metro-area rail network, in a landslide victory.

And as a recent RTD public opinion poll showed, most folks are still pretty happy with the decision despite the many setbacks FasTracks has faced. I say “most” because the shiny, happy feeling is not as overflowing in Boulder as it is everywhere else.

The survey, which cost RTD $50,000, showed that 85 percent of Denver-area residents said approving FasTracks was a good decision, with most saying they thought the planned 122 miles of rail and 18 miles of bus rapid transit would improve transportation and reduce congestion. There are certainly detractors who will say it has not done those things (I think it probably has), but we can all agree that promises have fallen short of the current reality.

In the communities that either have service or are expected to get service, support is highest. In Arapahoe, Douglas and Denver counties, 85 percent of respondents had a “somewhat favorable” or “very favorable” view of FasTracks. In Jefferson County, where the W line just opened, this was true of 79 percent of respondents, and in Adams County, which will benefit from the North Metro Line that is coming much closer to construction reality, it was true of 78 percent of respondents.

Even in Weld County, which no rail line will actually touch, FasTracks’ favorability was at 86 percent.

That’s not the case, however, in Boulder County, where favorability was only at 68 percent. And of the 32 percent who had a non-favorable view of FasTracks, 14 percent – double that of any other RTD county – had a “very unfavorable” view.

This is an interesting turn of events in Boulder County, where FasTracks passed with 64.7 percent of the vote in 2004, behind only Denver, which passed the tax initiative with 65.2 percent of the vote.

Folks in Boulder, Louisville and Longmont, all communities along the Northwest Rail Line corridor, are still fuming over the fact that RTD says it can’t build rail out to them until 2042. FasTracks, which in 2004 was pegged at a cost of $4.7 billion is now expected to cost $7.4 billion. That’s one big inversion of numbers.

The cost of the Northwest Rail Line alone has jumped from $461 million to $1.7 billion.

“I think what you’re seeing in this survey is the fact that Boulder County, Longmont, Louisville – we have yet to see the completion of any significant Fastracks project,” said Chuck Sisk, the former mayor of Louisville who now serves as the RTD board member for the area.

Sisk said he was pleasantly surprised to see that support was even in the 60 percent range.

“That’s a testament to the Boulder County residents, that they understand it’s a metro-wide FasTracks,” he said.

RTD is conducting a study right now that is aimed at diminishing, if possible, some of that frustration. The Northwest Area Mobility Study is meant to answer questions like, how about building construction of the Northwest Line in phases? Is it better to run rail service to Longmont through the North Metro Line instead of through Boulder? Should RTD offer Bus Rapid Transit on arterial streets like the Diagonal Highway?

There’s another question lurking underneath all these that isn’t part of the study but is the elephant in the train room: Would voters support an additional tax increase to accelerate completion of the FasTracks system?

RTD officials previously have decided to hold off on asking for more taxes, but critics of FasTracks like Jon Caldara, president of the libertarian-conservative Independence Institute and a former chairman of the RTD board, say it’s just a matter of time before the agency comes to voters with its hand out.

“The best advantage RTD has is that there are so many new people moving to the area, they don’t remember all the lies RTD has told,” he said.

I think that view is too cynical, but I will say there are plenty of people – in Boulder and elsewhere – who remember what RTD has said and what it has actually been able to do.

We voted for a train and we’re getting busses and HOV3 – none of which is what we voted to pay for. If RTD were a private entity we could sue them for breech of contract. This is dispicable and you can expect the favorability to go way below 50% as the reality of how we’ve been screwed comes into full focus for the people in Boulder county.

Vincent Carroll is The Denver Post's editorial page editor. He has been writing commentary on politics and public policy in Colorado since 1982 and was originally with the Rocky Mountain News, where he was also editor of the editorial pages until that newspaper gave up the ghost in 2009.

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